The center heightens awareness to residents and visitors about the importance of the Port of Corpus Christi. Serving as “the missing link that connected the port with people,” in the words of David Richter and Elizabeth Chu Richter, the husband-and-wife design team, the facility invites conference attendees to enter the realm of the ship channel, an enclave heretofore seldom visited by outsiders. Housed in a 1920s cotton warehouse still exhibiting its massive cast-concrete walls, the center includes a brick-clad addition to the east, angled in plan to usher visitors from Bayfront Plaza along a tree-lined esplanade.